Tape media are loaded for reading and writing to and from the tape media such as for long-term storage and retrieval of data from a host. After loading the tape media and after reading and/or writing data to and/or from the tape media, the tape media may remain in the tape drive for a period of time.
Typically, mounting a tape cartridge in single tape devices, such as drives, stresses the tapes through tension and/or physical contact. This in turn affects the stability and reliability of the tapes. A normal periodic load may be, for example, at the end of business hours for a nightly backup of data. The unload may not occur until morning. Some systems utilize an external application in the form of a Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) to automatically unload the tape media from a drive after a predetermined time, but these systems are deficient in how they achieve such an unthread operation. For example, performing an unload operation solely by an external application has drawbacks. As an external host or application, the TSM is adapted for interfacing with a wide variety of applications utilizing a wide variety of storage media. Thus, one of the drawbacks of the TSM is a lack of access by users to the application in the event of a failure of the application. Also, any parameters with which the TSM is configured are selected to be as universal as possible and would not apply to specific tape storage media being handled in the tape drive of a particular system. Hence, the TSM would likely not be configured for the correct amount of waiting time before an unthread operation in a particular media drive and/or for a particular medium. Therefore, although TSM applications may prolong the life and reliability of the tape media, they suffer from these and other drawbacks.